Rice mistake

Cooking new rice is tricky. Finding the perfect balance between water and grain can sometimes be elusive, as it was tonight.

I had a plan. I was going to try out the ma po tofu sauce I bought the other day at Genki. I try to make my own sauce for this dish but it never turns out right. It’s usually too bland or too watery or just plain too weird but passably edible. So, I thought, why not use packaged stuff? Eleanor said that our Japanese friend used it. It couldn’t be that bad. And I would make my new rice with it.

So, I set my new rice into the rice cooker before setting off with the tofu. The rice was an organic brown Calrose that I got when I was in LA doing some random shopping at the Nijiya Market on Sawtelle. There were no directions on the package, but I assumed the same water to rice ratio as the brown Calrose that I used before: one part rice, two and a half parts water. I put the rice and the water into the cooker, closed the lid, and pressed the button.

Forty minutes later, I was done. My tofu was ready. It turned out to be a very brown mix of tofu and pork that didn’t look too appetizing, so I threw in some frozen peas and corn for color. It also wasn’t as spicy as the package led me to believe. I’m not sure if I’m a fan.

But, the tofu wasn’t the main problem. The rice was. It was too hard, too crunchy, and too chewy. It wasn’t good, nor was it bad enough to warrant disposal so I kept eating it, giving my jaw a workout. I didn’t put enough water and the center of the grains were just barely tender enough. And, the crunch, I think, was caused by the rice sticking to the bottom of the pot when all the water was absorbed by the grains. I somehow pulled off what would normally sound impossible: cooking crunchy yet chewy rice. Next time, more water. Lesson learned.